


say my name (& everything just stops)

by womanaction



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Challenge fic, Episode: s03e13 Waiting In The Wings, F/F, kinda dubcon makeout because of ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 08:13:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13244157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanaction/pseuds/womanaction
Summary: During "Waiting in the Wings", Cordelia and Fred discover some commonalities.





	1. Chapter 1

“I love to watch dancers,” Fred sighs dreamily, leaning against a rack of really ugly dresses. No, that one is almost cute, not her color but it might look good on Fred – Cordelia pulls it out, looks at the hem. Nope. Ugly. “They’re so graceful, you know?”

Cordelia’s eyes stray back to the other woman. She’s always had a critical eye, but something about Fred’s softness makes her reluctant to apply it. Sure, her wide-eyed gaze makes her look a little bit like a deer or a baby gazelle about to get eaten in some nature documentary, but it’s kind of sweet. And, appearances to the contrary, Fred survived in Pylea for five years without getting eaten. “You’re pretty graceful too,” Cordelia says honestly. “And teeny tiny. Are you sure you’re not a dancer?”

Fred blushes, hopefully flattered and not embarrassed. “I took for a while,” she confesses, toying with an embroidered sleeve. Cordelia considers it momentarily, but it would overwhelm tiny Fred and it’s so not her own style – the neckline is practically nun-ish. “A long while.”

“So what happened? Big brain knocked you off balance? Didn’t fit in with the crowd?” Dancers are like cheerleaders, she reflects, but meaner. God, that red gown is gorgeous, but there’s no way her credit limit can cover that and something for Fred. It’s a wonder what five years missing will do to tank your credit score.

“I hurt my knee,” Fred says quietly.

Oh. Yikes. “Oh. Yikes – I mean, sorry. For bringing it up.”

“It’s okay.” She picks a piece of lint off a Cinderella blue dress. Cordelia assumes the lint is imaginary; based on the hawkish looks the employees keep sending them, even dust is probably afraid to fall in here. “I mean, sometimes I think about the other me in some other world, who never hurt her knee, never went to UCLA, never got trapped in Pylea…but it’s not all bad. She’s missing out on some good things, too.”

“Like?”

“Like meeting you. And everyone else,” Fred adds, not quickly enough.

When she first met Fred, she’d assumed they couldn’t be more different, and the time they’d spent together had only confirmed that. But the sudden moment of compulsive honestly feels awfully familiar to her, and Cordelia feels her face break into a grin. “Yeah? Well, right back at you,” she says as she plucks this gorgeous burgundy number off the rack and presses it to Fred’s body. “Somewhere, A-lister Cordelia Chase is also a little unlucky.”

Fred’s smile lights up her whole face. “They don’t know what they’re missing,” she says, hand brushing Cordelia’s as she takes the gown from her.

(Later, after a partially possessed but completely hot makeout, Cordelia realizes just how true that is.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Less NSFW but also a lot more immediate than anticipated. Who knows, maybe I'll write more of this?

Cordelia’s hand shudders across her breast. Fred sighs out something like desperation.

“I need you,” someone says, but if it’s her or the dancer that is her or Cordelia or the lover that is Cordelia, she’s not sure. It’s all a fevered dream, passing out of her memory and leaving behind only vague images.

A kiss, pressed against a bare collarbone.

A moan, dark and needy.

A zipper sliding down (or is it two? Hard to tell) before they’re interrupted.

She’s thought about it so many times in the last few days that she can’t tell what really happened from her endless reconstructions. Memory is reconstruction, she remembers (or remakes, anyway) from her undergraduate psychology classes. But she’s reconstructed this particular memory at least a dozen times, and each time she feels that tell-tale blush, hot and obvious, as she strains to remember every detail. Did she imagine Cordelia’s neck flushing, or her saying “Fred” in an overcome voice? Did she imagine that moment where they kissed and the others faded away, their long-dead echoes drowned out by the current passion?

If she was Cordelia, she’d probably ask her (of course, if she was Cordelia, she wouldn’t be kissing herself and then analyzing it for days); since Cordelia is herself and hasn’t asked Fred, maybe it doesn’t bother her.

She’s thinking of it again, though. This time her mind does more than reconstruct; it ventures past, imagining her hand making its way up Cordy’s thigh, Cordy’s lips making a little “o” of surprised pleasure and her hips canting up. Oh, this is inappropriate for the workplace, especially when it involves your coworker, she mentally scolds herself.

The only thing worse than the constant barrage of remembered and imagined sensations is her fear of losing Cordelia’s friendship because of it. She’d never had many close friends before – Cordy’s joke about not fitting in with the dance crowd, innocently meant, had hit a little close to home. She hadn’t fit in with them, not really; nor had she fit in with the other history students, or the other physics students after switching her major. Grad school had been a little better, while it lasted, but she still felt different. Always liked, often praised, but more often than not she spent her free time alone.

Cordelia wouldn’t stand for that kind of thing. She had never been alone, even when she probably wanted to be – she had always been magnetic.

“Can I talk to you privately?” she blurts out suddenly. Three pairs of eyes look up with various degrees of eagerness (Angel is with Connor); Cordelia’s are the most cautious. “Um, to Cordy, I mean.”

“Thank God,” Cordelia sighs against the Hyperion room door as she shuts it behind them. “Those two are having some weird little homoerotic competition in there.”

Of all the things she needed to hear right now, Cordy saying “homoerotic” wasn’t one of them. She steels herself, tries to tie herself to the here and now, but Cordy’s perfume smells so heady and good, it’s a little hard to concentrate. “I…can we talk about the other day? I just don’t want things to be…weird,” she finishes lamely.

“Weird? Fred, I’m from Sunnydale. Weird, I can take. That was not my first brush with possession, so I’ll make it simple – it wasn’t us.” Cordelia shrugs with apparent carelessness, taking a few steps into the room.

She should feel relieved. “Oh. Okay,” she says, unable to hide her disappointment. “That’s good. I’ll just…go.”

“Fred, wait,” Cordelia says, sounding frustrated. Her gaze rakes over Fred’s body, but she isn’t sure what the other woman is searching for. Finally, she sighs. “It wasn’t us,” she says, more quietly and seriously. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t be.”

 _Oh._ “Oh. _Oh_. Oh?”

“Seriously, genius-level intellect and all you can say is – oh,” Cordy says just as Fred kisses her.

She draws away hastily. “Sorry, that was what you meant, right? This is okay?”

“Better than okay,” Cordelia says impatiently, pulling her back in for another kiss. She drinks in the moment in case she needs to recreate it later – the smell of Cordelia’s perfume, the taste of her mouth, the little gasping sound she makes as they break apart. “You really are graceful,” she says, voice teasing but a little husky.

Fred’s breath catches. “You want to see how graceful I can be?” she teases back, feeling so bold it’s almost an out-of-body experience. Cordelia gives her an almost feline smile in reply and pulls her down onto the bed.

This time, there are no interruptions.


End file.
